Flying the Nest? Why it Pays to Have Your Parents Still At the Wheel

Students planning to hire a van to transport their stuff to university could save themselves up to £236 by letting their parents do the hiring and driving instead.

Hiring a van from Sixt for the weekend before Freshers’ Week, from 24 – 25 September, costs £83 for an adult over 25 years, who is also happy to return the van to the same place (London to London), compared with a cost of £319 for an adult under 25 years, to drive the van from London to Manchester one-way.

iCarhireinsurance.com, a leading provider of van and car hire excess insurance, looked at the costs for a student, under 25 years, to hire a van to travel from London to Manchester one way compared with their parents (or guardians over 25 years) hiring the van from London and returning it to the same place again.

For a student, under 25 years, the cost to hire a van was £214 with Budget and £319 with Sixt. (Enterprise and Nationwide would not give prices for under 25 years old).

Whereas an adult over 25 years hiring from London and returning to the same place again would only be paying £62 with Budget, £83 with Sixt, £91 with Nationwide and £123 with Enterprise.

The majority of the cost was not returning the van to the same place as an adult under 25 years would only have to pay an additional £36 with Sixt, for instance, to do the London to London round trip paying a final hire price of £119, compared to the £319 price with Sixt if the van was hired from London to Manchester one way.

Both students and parents hiring vans should consider purchasing van hire excess insurance which will protect them against an excess charge in the event of an accident or damage to the vehicle. All of the van hire companies in the study had an excess charge over £1000. iCarhireinsurance.com sells van hire excess policies for £27.99 for the two day period, which covers up to nine named drivers, theft and is valid for 14 days continuous cover. iCarhireinsurance.com’s parent company, Halo Insurance Services Ltd, is FCA regulated.

Hiring a van to get everything to Uni can be cost-effective but costs do spiral for one-way journeys and for adults wanting to hire under 25,” said Ernesto Suarez, CEO and founder of iCarhireinsurance.com. “It certainly pays to keep parents in the driving seat until the suitcases, boxes and bin liners are safely deposited!”